


A Home In Your Heart

by dandelion_san



Series: khr ficlets [4]
Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fluff and Humor, Friendship, Gen, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-18
Updated: 2017-03-18
Packaged: 2018-10-06 20:47:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10344246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dandelion_san/pseuds/dandelion_san
Summary: In which Mukuro met Tsuna first.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Seito](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seito/gifts).



> Edited from tumblr. Also, thanks, Seito, for giving me the inspiration (may your fluffy writing never end).

In this world, Mukuro somehow ends up on a boat to Japan and got himself separated from Ken and Chikusa. Refusing to believe he was lost and feeling just a bit on the verge of terrified, he wandered in and out of the back-alleys of small seaside towns and ventured deeper into the country. Days passed until one night, he stumbled his way into Namimori.

Exhausted, hungry, and barely conscious, he made his way towards one ordinary house and stopped in front of the gates, intrigued by the way his heart seemed to beat harder the closer he got to it. His instincts were screaming at him, and Mukuro thought – okay. Okay. Fine.

So he opened the gates.

 _Go, go_ , something tugged at him.

So he took a step forward. And another one. And somehow he was scaling the walls – and somehow he was opening the window –

And he tumbled in, rolled like a potato, and ended up on his back. He turned his head. He was in a small, child’s bedroom. A boy's room. (There was a bed. There was a boy on the bed.)

“Hey there,” said Mukuro, voice a hoarse croak. His Japanese was almost difficult to decipher with his thick Italian accent.

“MamadfjaklfjdWHOdfHELP,” shrieked the boy, voice somewhere beyond the range of human comprehension.

 

* * *

 

The boy’s name was Tsuna and he gave Mukuro a bath because he was “stinky and gross oh my god _ew_ are those WORMS?! In your hair?!?”

Mukuro let out a sigh like a purr and leaned into Tsuna’s touch who was scrubbing at him as if he were a dirty speck. Which he was, pretty much.

“Ow,” he said sleepily. Tsuna had rubbed harshly on one of his scarred over needle-marks. He shook his head a bit, lazily, and a dead cockroach slid out of his tangled knot of hair.

“OH MY GOD,” Tsuna wailed and ended up washing him five times.

 

* * *

 

Mukuro kept still, feeling languid and clean for the first time in his life as Tsuna dried him off with a fluffy white towel. Then Tsuna rubbed at his hair until it resembled a wet porcupine before he handed him a clean pair of boxers, some pants, and a shirt. He was too tall for the clothes, but it ended up hanging slightly off his frame because of how skinny he was.

“Oh my god,” Tsuna whispered as he snuck downstairs and heated up some soup. He wondered why Nana hadn’t woken up. “Oh my _god_ ,” he cried while watching Mukuro attack the soup with gusto, staining his new clothes. “Oh,” he simply said as Mukuro fell asleep on his bed, back against the wall and hugging the blanket close to him like it could protect him from the world. He was clutching at Tsuna’s hand so Tsuna laid next to him and watched him until he fell asleep too.

 

* * *

 

The next morning, Mukuro woke Tsuna up with a hand around his throat. He leaned in close and oh-so-lightly squeezed, his thumb placed just on the younger boy's pulse. It fluttered under it, reminding him of butterfly wings.

“If you tell anyone about me, I will kill you,” he said, eyes crinkling up in little crescents. "Then I will pull out your intestines and drape them over your parents' bed." Mukuro bit harshly on his cheek and then released him. He leaned back. Smiled. He watched Tsuna who was Not Moving and gently nudged him. “Breathe,” he reminded.

Tsuna breathed and did not scream. He laid there, a stupid look on his face. Mukuro giggled.

 

* * *

 

For the record, Nana did find out, but she registered his presence with a hum and a, “Oh Tsu-kun, why didn’t you tell me you had a friend over?” before making some delicious breakfast.

She didn’t seem to be all there, to be honest. But Tsuna was staring at Mukuro with an odd protective fury so Mukuro didn’t say anything about that. How funny, so the boy did have a little spine.

“She’s alright,” Mukuro decided and Tsuna relaxed. He didn’t ask, _is she always like that_?

 

* * *

 

He ended up throwing up in the toilet from eating too quickly, too fast, and too much. Tsuna rubbed his back and held his hair up. Mukuro tried to squirm away but Tsuna held him still with a firm hand.

“No,” he said. “You’ll get it everywhere.” Mukuro felt vaguely insulted.

 

* * *

 

Tsuna got Mukuro his own toothbrush. Mukuro was also tall, so he didn’t need a footstool. Tsuna got him his own washcloth instead. It had an 'M' on it.

He got a space in the closet and managed to take over the bed. Nana started setting his place at the table. He also gained weight and Nana got him clothes too. He also refused to take baths unless Tsuna washed him, obviously becoming spoiled from the first time. Sometimes, Tsuna woke up in the night or morning and Mukuro was watching him with eyes that were just a little too blank or there was a hand squeezing his throat too tightly or a stolen knife that was pressing into his skin, hard enough to make him bleed but not enough to be painful. But Tsuna still didn't scream. And more often than not, he woke up because Mukuro had him crushed between the wall and his body, with his hands buried into his thick hair.

Tsuna wasn't too smart, but sometimes his mind picked out the little details like that. Like how Mukuro's back was noticeably to the rest of the room. 

(His Japanese slowly started losing its accent).

 

* * *

 

“I’m going to destroy all the scum on this earth,” Mukuro announced one day completely out of the blue. He and Tsuna were both eating snacks and playing Tsuna’s video games.

“Um,” Tsuna said. “Okay. Why?”

Mukuro swiftly destroyed Tsuna’s character while he was distracted. He wanted to roll his eyes and shake his shoulders. Come _on_ , Tsuna. The Mafia are Evil and they _used_ him. Broke him. Also, separated him from Ken and Chikusa. (He kinda missed them).

Tsuna paused the game to his protest and faced him, wide-eyed. “W-what?”

Mukuro frowned and realized he hadn’t really told Tsuna where he came from or what happened so he proceeded to do so. And to his surprise, Tsuna started crying.

He sat there awkwardly as the boy next to him quietly sobbed, shoulders hunched over and trembling. Fat teardrops dripped through Tsuna’s hands and Mukuro could see snot smearing around his face.

“Stop!” Mukuro snapped, suddenly feeling angry. “Stop that, it’s disgusting!”

Tsuna just cried harder, a low hurt wail echoing around the room. It was a sound Mukuro hadn’t heard before and his anger grew intense.

“If you don’t stop that right now, I’m going to kill you!” He grabbed his shoulders and forced Tsuna to look at him. Tsuna’s expression stopped whatever Mukuro was going to say next so he just huffed and stood up and locked himself in the closet.

 

* * *

 

After Tsuna stopped crying and convinced Mukuro to come out, they resumed their game.

Tsuna kept beating Mukuro up. It was infuriating.

“…Okay,” Tsuna finally said after a moment of Mukuro’s low cursing of words no ten year old should know. “So, you’re going to be like a super-hero right?”

“Hah?”

“Y’know. The whole, ‘destroy all scum’ thing. You said you’re going to get rid of the mafia?”

Mukuro sneered. “I’m going to grind them to _dust_.” He smiled, remembering the way the Estraneo scientists had screamed under his illusions.

“Okay, so you want to be a super-hero.” 

“Sure, whatever. Hah! Take that!” Mukuro crowed in victory.

He didn’t see Tsuna’s eyes gleam as visions of giant robots and caped vigilantes ran through his mind.

“ _Sweet_ ,” he whispered. Mukuro didn’t hear him. (Later, he would regret this entire interaction).

 

* * *

 

All things come to an end, eventually.

Everyone abandoned him, after all.

“Mukuro, I’m just going to school,” Tsuna said. “Please come out from the blankets.”

“What is this school?” Mukuro’s voice was muffled, but his derision was heard clearly. “It sounds like prison. What an awful word, this ‘school’.”

“Please, just come down and eat breakfast.”

“I can’t believe my servant is abandoning his master for some, _school_.”

 _Servant? I literally pet you, and this is how you treat me_ , Tsuna thought dryly. “Mukuro, I’ll come back after a few hours. It’s not like I want to go either.”

“So don’t go!”

“I can’t! If I am going to be a productive member of society, I have to go to school and Learn Important Things!”

Mukuro popped his head out and glared. Tsuna wasn’t bothered much by his mismatched eyes at this point, but Mukuro had some pretty frightening expressions which wasn’t helped by his one red eye. “Go and leave me,” he hissed.

Tsuna rolled his eyes and left.

 

* * *

 

When he eventually came back after school, there was another boy accompanying him.

“WHO IS THAT,” said Mukuro, outraged. He had absolutely _not_ been waiting for the younger boy all day.

Tsuna looked terrified, an expression Mukuro hadn’t seen recently. And it wasn’t aimed at him, it was for the intruder.

“This is Hibari,” Tsuna said. “Please, don’t make him mad.”

Too late. Mukuro launched himself at the intruder with a howl.

 

* * *

 

Listen.

Give a kid enough inspiration and it can _change_ him.

Tsuna had completely forgotten about his bullies with how much fun he’d been having with Mukuro all summer, even if Mukuro could be scary sometimes. So he’d been caught off-guard when he was cornered by several of them when the end-of-the-day bell rung.

Thinking of Mukuro and his dreams of being a superhero and saving the world from the Evil Mafia (Tsuna refused to think about his more homicidal antics), Tsuna thought that maybe. Maybe he too, could be a hero. His eyes filled with the metaphorical fire of a boy with Dreams. (Someday, that too would turn literal but the literal breaking of physics and all known rules of reality would happen years down into the future). 

With that in mind, he fought back with all of his nine-year-old fury and was thoroughly trounced. Fortunately, Hibari Kyouya was in the area. Unfortunately, Hibari Kyouya had witnessed this all.

 

* * *

 

“I can’t believe this,” Mukuro said. His mind was a little fuzzy from all these unrecognizable feelings he’d been having recently. “I let you go to school for one day, and this is what happens? You left me for another master.”

He was sitting as far away from Hibari as possible and tended to his wounds with a certain grouchiness more befitting of an old grizzled tiger.

Hibari, on his part, was allowing Tsuna to place super-sentai band-aids on him with a certain amount of regalness more befitting of an emperor. Mukuro jealously looked at the band-aids and then at Tsuna who was doing his best to ignore him. Hibari, however, _was_ paying attention to him, but with disgust.

 _Ugh_ , said his expression.  _Go die_ , said Mukuro's. 

The prefect turned to Tsuna.

“You had another child living here and he’s not attending school?” He didn't even sound that angry. Tsuna shrugged.

“He’s not registered,” he admitted with a slight stutter because Hibari was Hibari whom even the police were afraid of. 

“Hmph, whatever,” Hibari said. “I don’t want this piece of filth on Namimori school property anyways.”

 

* * *

 

The next day, Mukuro was dressed and at the door.

“What are you doing,” Tsuna asked tiredly.

“I’m going to this ‘school’ with you,” Mukuro said with air quotes.

“Oh my god.”

 

* * *

 

Five years later, Reborn arrived at Namimori with the expectation of turning a loser into a mafia don.

To his surprise, he found the survivor of the Estraneo experiments (the same one who had killed the entire Family, incidentally) hanging off of Iemitsu’s son like an octopus. The kid was also wearing some odd cape. So was Sawada who was wearing his uniform in a similar manner to the school’s prefect.

“What the hell,” he said.

“Arcobaleno,” hissed Rokudo.

“OH MY GOD,” said the future Tenth who had already wrestled Rokudo to the ground and was now sitting on him. “I HATE YOU ALL.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Based on [this post](http://seitosokusha.tumblr.com/post/158183121973/ahaha-i-have-no-idea-why-but-i-think-one-of-the)


End file.
